Electronic images, video, audio, animation, text, and other content are widely communicated over electronic networks, such as the Internet. Electronic distribution and clearance services typically act as marketplaces or brokerages where owners contribute content and potential licensees search for and license content. Searching and maintaining large databases of content assets using conventional keyword search techniques and conventional database management techniques can be time consuming and require extensive computing power.
To improve efficiency, some content systems enable users to use a variety of criteria for filtering and organizing content assets. One criterion often used in the content licensing field, is a licensing model under which content is available for use. For example, a database may include stock photographs, each of which is available under one of a number of licensing models. Each licensing model typically indicates a relationship between one or more permitted uses and a corresponding type of pricing for licensing photos. For example one licensing model may provide a consistent price that is not dependent on a user specifying intended uses. Conversely, another licensing model may determine a price based on intended uses specified by the user. Under any licensing model, content owners (e.g., photographers) may impose customized restrictions on some uses of some content (sometimes referred to as contract restrictions). For example, some content owners may require that certain photographs not be used for advertising products that a content owner believes are undesirable. Content purchasers, such as advertising professionals, often choose to filter available photographs by a preferred licensing model, although searches can be performed across multiple licensing models.
Users can usually also select other filtering criteria, including a collection of content assets to which a desired content asset belongs (e.g., images by a certain photographer), a topic of content assets (e.g., celebrities), an image orientation (e.g., horizontal), a date range in which content assets were created, a resolution of content items, and a status of rights clearance (e.g., whether a person in a photograph has given permission to use his/her likeness). For some users, selecting numerous filtering criteria can be too confusing, and a simpler search system is desired, yet without sacrificing the flexibility of the numerous filtering criteria. Also desirable, is an option to filter based on various price levels or other value levels.
For content managers, maintaining changes to applied criteria can also be confusing and time consuming. For example, an image broker may wish to change the licensing model, pricing, and/or other criteria that are currently applied to a collection of images. However, changing each set of criteria for each image can be prohibitively time consuming and/or create a greater chance of error. Also, changing some criteria may depend on other criteria, or cause other criteria to change also. Checking criteria relationships for a large number of content assets can also prolong the time needed to make updates and produce errors. In addition, reorganizing content assets, such as moving content assets to different groups, can be time consuming and error prone. With a large number of groups, it is difficult for a content manager to keep track of the status and criteria of each source and destination group. If a destination group is inactive, or has some incompatible criteria, a content manager may accidentally move a content asset to a group that is not accessible to end users at that time. This may result in lost licenses of the content asset, mixing of incompatible content assets in a group, applying an incorrect value to content assets, and/or other errors. Embodiments of the invention are directed to these and other issues.